


big wet rose in my teeth

by thimble



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-08
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-18 06:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tells time by the colour of Q's lips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	big wet rose in my teeth

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Big wet rose in my teeth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/584948) by [Schattentaenzerin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schattentaenzerin/pseuds/Schattentaenzerin)
  * Translation into 中文 available: [齿间玫瑰](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2433383) by [Go_MrCactus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go_MrCactus/pseuds/Go_MrCactus)



> Title from 'All the Wine' by The National.

He tells time by the colour of Q's lips.

The days wear the same face, and the nights are the same ghost reappearing. He doesn't glance at his watch; his body knows if it's mid-afternoon, or just before dawn. As long as the assignment's unfinished, he doesn't have to. He relies on his fingers to orbit around the trigger when he needs it, his muscles to remember the weight of his bones when he leaps from six stories high. He asks those bones not to snap in two, in turn.

(Q has given him a gun in a bible to keep in the hotel table.

"You think you're funny," he says. Q smirks, blood-orange.

"Don't forget to pray.")

There are women who leave lipstick on his cheekbones, men whose teeth tattoo into his throat. They all die, if not the morning after, then the morning after that. Most of them are good for at least a twenty second head start, whether they wore diamonds on their necks or their cufflinks. 

There's a chase, there's always a chase. His chest mimics a racetrack as he goes up to one-eighty, two fifty. Glass explodes behind him and he gets cuts over skin that has just healed. Little shards seep into his veins and to join the ones from before and if it doesn't kill him, he'll bleed shards until they do. He sacrifices cars that aren't his and gets lost in a city he's never been to.

(Q has a pen tucked into the curve of his ear, the cap of it barely visible under his untidy hair.

"Exploding?" he says, to tease. He doesn't expect a nod in reply.

"We don't get much action down here," Q grins, amused and maroon. "I like to live on the edge.")

This is the halfway mark. He finds a mirror and treats the wounds on his reflection, but it's too late to warm the blue in his eyes. He adds several more stitches to the thousands he already has. He spits on the sink; it comes out thick, rotten apple red. That had been the shade of Q's lips after he'd stolen a bite for the road.

(Q sighs; and he's rarely sorry for anything, but there's a sting like it when he pulls away. Q's mouth had been peach precisely seventeen seconds earlier.

"I ought to kill you. I can do it, you know." It's not a threat, not one spoken through supernova bruises.

"Maybe I won't stop you," he says. Every scar flares for a moment, in memory of everyone who's ever tried.

"On second thought, I prefer you alive.")

He blinks the last days away. It's always money burned and traitors gutted, hierarchies crumbling and planes that should smell like clouds, for all the time they spend among them, but don't. It's in the ruined suits and sewer-stink shoes, in every pound of flesh punishing him for letting the years catch up.

It's in Q's lips, chapped and almost bloodless, pale from his absence. He knows instantly that it's been three weeks. 

"The next one will be quicker," he says, in staccato breaths. Their kiss is sandpaper, a rough tongue over a rough mouth. It rubs them raw, scalded from the collision. Their bodies are never beside each other long enough to synchronise.

"Keep your promises to yourself," Q says, smile bitter as old wine, so he drinks, and drinks, to the god of guns in bibles and shorter days.


End file.
